


The Games We Play

by Arrynae9



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: M/M, bonnie and clyde au, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrynae9/pseuds/Arrynae9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were stories about them. Bandits in the night, smirks and screams and a smoking gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Games We Play

**Author's Note:**

> Bonnie and Clyde AU oneshot, 'cause my sister is awesome and gave me the prompt today.   
> Jeremy's POV. The italicised parts are from some of Bonnie Parker's poems.  
> Enjoy!

There were stories about them.  
Bandits in the night, smirks and screams and a smoking gun.   
They were more than that though, Jeremy knew. More than their crimes, more than the petty killers the cops made them out to be.

Jeremy didn’t like to boast – and wasn’t that just the lie to top all lies – but he knew the Barrow Gang. Not like those wannabe criminals down in the bars of Philly “knew” them, no. He knew them up close and personal, and they were something he’d never forget.

 

They were shooting up a bar when he first met them.

“Hands in the air, if you don’t mind.” Sebastian Monroe waved his gun to the barman, a glint of- something in his eye. “And hand over the cash.”  
“Let’s make this quick, Bass.” His accomplice, the killer renowned for his ruthlessness and cruelty, was casually pouring himself a drink. Miles Matheson flashed a grin. “Unless you care for a run in with Mister ‘Sergeant Neville’."   
Monroe laughed, and it sounded like a death rattle. “Perhaps another day.”   
Jeremy was ducked under a table, hiding with the rest of the bar patrons from the Barrow Mob, but strangely he felt no fear.   
These two men were the talk of all Philadelphia. They killed for fun, they took lives as other men took women, and they relished in their fame. And here they were, not six feet from him.  
It was _exhilarating_.

Jeremy hadn’t been paying attention, but suddenly the other patrons of the bar were screaming, and he looked up to see the limp body of a young man slump against the bar door.   
Matheson slowly, lazily, reloaded his pistol.   
“What did I say about running?” He said, and Monroe laughed.

When the cops arrived an hour later, the Barrow Gang were long gone, leaving only one survivor – and Jeremy was still under his table, exhilaration mixing with the taste of blood on his tongue.

 

Jeremy liked to listen to the stories. Hear what the public got right and what they got wrong – they mostly got it wrong, of course, but a few of their wild tales proved amusing. One story in particular caught his attention.   
It was exaggerated, obviously – the public did like to dramatize things – but it had a peculiar ring of truth.

Despite Monroe appearing the more unhinged of the two, it was supposedly Matheson who started the twisted game they played. They were brothers, once (though if you listened to some very different stories, their affections were anything but brotherly). No one was quite sure what started it, but one day, Matheson took out his gun and shot a man four times in the head. Of course, the cops weren’t going to let a murder case go, and Monroe, loyal brother that he was, followed Matheson into hiding. There was nothing of them for two months; and then the killings began. Rumours ran wild. Matheson had found a taste for blood, and with Monroe at his side they would build an army. A militia of a kind never before seen, centred in Philadelphia. Things progressed predictably from there, and their one-man-murders became back robberies, bar shoot-ups, mass-murder on a scale growing larger by the day. Only Miles Matheson could say when Sebastian Monroe lost his sanity, but in a single blood-stained night the press became centred on Monroe, his madness drawing in romanticism from the public. He wrote poems about the two of them, sending them into newspapers – _“They made up their minds, if all roads were blind, they wouldn’t give up ‘til they died.”_

Jeremy listened to all the stories. He listened, and he wondered, and he watched Matheson and Monroe until his eyes bled.   
(And if maybe, some nights, he heard the evidence of the truth in those ‘other’ stories – well, he knew better than to tell.)

 

It wasn’t all gunfights and robberies, however. There were quiet nights too, nights when the only things to break the still calm were soft voices pitched just too low to hear, and swirls of smoke rising into the sky.   
Jeremy had the privilege of witnessing one of those nights, though he regretted it afterwards. It felt like something personal, something he wasn’t meant to see, but he couldn’t close his ears from their words.

“Do you think we’ll ever stop?”   
That was Monroe. Jeremy imagined him sitting there, too close to Matheson as he always seemed to be these days, and tried not to listen.   
Monroe’s question hung heavy in the air for a long time, and Jeremy thought of Matheson. He wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t look back at his friend – though friends was definitely not what they were – even though he would feel Monroe’s eyes on him, uncomfortably close.   
“We can’t, Bass.”   
A cigar was lit; Matheson. Jeremy thought of dark eyes through smoke, and close his own eyes tighter.   
“You know that.”   
“Yeah.” Monroe sighed, and then the silence weighed down, heavier than it had ever been, and Jeremy knew they all would be feigning sleep that night.

 

He always knew how their wild adventure would end. He thought Miles and Bass did too (because they weren’t Matheson and Monroe, not to him, not anymore). Still, Jeremy never quite expected them to go out like this.

Someone had tipped them off. The cops – the enemy.

_From heartbreak some people have suffered_

This wasn’t meant to happen, they were so close. Jeremy looked around as he reloaded his pistol. Miles and Bass were fighting back-to-back, pistols drawn and teeth bared.

_From weariness some people have died_

“Miles!” Jeremy screamed, and the man glanced up for a split second to show he was listening. Jeremy didn’t know what to say, so he just screamed again, gesturing violently towards the door over the heads of too many cops to count.

_They don’t think they’re tough or desperate_

Bass looked resigned, Miles looked determined, and for the first time since joining the Barrow Gang Jeremy felt scared.

_They know the law always wins_

The scent of gunpowder filled the room. Jeremy wanted to choke, to rid his lungs of the stench, because he wasn’t like Miles or Bass, he was human, and he breathed _air._

_They’ve been shot at before, but they do not ignore_

Somehow he made his way over to them, firing both pistols in his hands and throwing punches as he went. Bass looked at him, and there was something in his eyes.   
“It was you.” He said, and then pain blossomed in Jeremy’s chest.

_That death is the wages of sin_

Jeremy stared, looked up at them, and Matheson was still firing but Monroe just glared at him (because they were Matheson and Monroe, to him, to everyone, and he was a fool to think otherwise).

The last thing Jeremy saw before the world went black, was a bullet going through Monroe’s head.

 

_Someday they’ll go down together_   
_And they’ll bury them side by side_   
_To a few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief_   
_But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde._


End file.
